Architecture News & Views We Need More Adventurous Buildings

Date Published:

27/05/2008

Few things are thought more impolite or aggressive than to disagree with someone's judgement about buildings. Nevertheless, it does seem possible to argue that part of the function of any building is to reflect its era and its location. Therefore something seems peculiar in putting up houses that ape the architectural styles of two centuries ago.

It's perhaps easiest to accept this argument when we're confronted with examples of buildings that are dramatically, unambiguously at odds with their surroundings. One set can be found just near the Japanese city of Nagasaki. Across the bay from the airport stands Huis Ten Bosch Dutch Village, the brainchild of a Japanese tycoon who travelled to Europe as a young man and fell in love with the pre-modern architecture of the Netherlands, to the extent that he decided to build a 152-acre housing development in its honour. The Dutch Village recreates the streets of Dutch cities and includes canals, windmills, cobbled squares, and reproductions of Amsterdam's Central Station, the Royal Palace in the Hague and Utrecht's Nijenrode Castle.

Huis Ten Bosch Dutch Village in Japan is a remarkable reproduction of famous Dutch buildings and architectural styles. The man behind the project went to incredible lengths to ensure complete historical accuracy, even transporting bricks from Holland. Although it looks realistic, the village is at odds with its surroundings, giving it a strange atmosphere.

However, despite the craftsmanship and the millions of yen that it took to transport bricks from the Netherlands to ensure utter historical accuracy, this housing development is absurd and eerie - a point that alerts us to a key requirement that we can make of all buildings: that they should in certain ways cohere with their settings; that they should speak to us of the significant values and characteristics of their own locations and eras.

Though far less extreme a case, Great Notley Garden Village is not free of Huis Ten Bosch's disorienting qualities, for it too is critically disconnected from the psychological and practical demands of its society. It too seems to be turning its back on the reality around it. It is the architectural equivalent of a person who insists on speaking in Shakespearean English or on going to the office wearing a cape and a wig.

To argue that we should keep up with our era isn't to advocate blindly following fashion or accepting all that the modern world stands for. To continue the analogy, we can use a modern vocabulary, but still try to capture some of the intelligence and wit of the great Elizabethan writers. Similarly, we can side with a contemporary architectural idiom without needing to build houses that look like steel sheds or concrete bunkers.